I certainly don’t begrudge developing countries their increasing consumption of beef: over a third of their women suffer from anemia - like the women in Congo, where per capita beef consumption is around half a pound a year.

Per the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN would make huge progress towards meeting its 2050 land-use and emissions climate change mitigation targets if 2 billion people reduced their ruminant (mostly beef) meat consumption by 40%. Under such a scenario, poorer countries could still consume more ruminant meat than they are currently - to their citizens’ nutritional betterment given the prevalence of anemia in so many of these countries.

Basically this boils down to convincing men in high- and middle-income countries to eat less beef. As in cutting their beef consumption by about two-thirds.

American men consume around 40 ounces of beef a week, on average. They should reduce that to around 14 ounces a week. Hey! That’s still a steak and two hamburgers every week. Not too much of a sacrifice to help save the planet.

Besides, there’s still pork and chicken, both of which have much lighter carbon footprints than beef: